Warlock

devils?”
        
        “That I would,” the Shaker said. He was not merely being polite, for he had always been curious about the odd feathered creatures man had come to use as advance scouts in war and on hazardous ground.
        
        Fremlin led him to a great chestnut stallion whose rump was slung across with a cargo strap. From each end of the strap hung a wicker cage which was further secured by cord to the saddle to keep it from slapping the beast's flanks as it walked. In each cage, there were two birds. Each was perhaps twice as large as a man's hand, and each stared through the wooden bars of its prison with pitch black, intelligent eyes that seemed to examine Shaker Sandow with speculative interest. They looked much like ravens, except that there was a crimson streak down the center of the small head, fanning intricately across the orange beak. On the center of each breast was a white diamond.
        
        “Handsome, aren't they?” Fremlin asked, obviously proud of his four winged friends.
        
        That they are. And valuable, I would say. We will want to know much about the way ahead once we reach the far side of the Cloud Range.”
        
        The smile faded from Fremlin's face, and though he did not allow a scowl to replace it, the evidence of such an unpleasant expression was there, just behind the skin. “Perhaps not so valuable in comparison to a Shaker,” the bird master said. “You could do a reading and perhaps see the way more clearly than any Squealer could.”
        
        “Perhaps,” the Shaker said. “But it requires ritual and energy to perform a reading. There will be instances when we do not have the time for that, or when I will not have the energy.”
        
        “I hope you will permit my charges to make their reports first. They are proud creatures, and more clever and understanding than most men give them credit for. If they are merely to be kept in their cages while a Shaker does their work, they will soon become dispirited and ill.”
        
        “Have no fear,” the Shaker said. “And remember that, even if I should have the energy and time for a reading, the power in me does not always work. Sometimes the picture is unclear. Other times, there is no picture whatsoever.”
        
        The bird master seemed to relax a little. “It is with you as all other Shakers, then. I have heard of your power, and feared there would be no limitations on it at all.”
        
        Shaker Sandow bent to the cage before him, touched a finger to the wicker bars. “What say you, friends?”
        
        The two creatures inside danced along the perching rungs and came close to him, cocked their heads to engage him with one large black eye each. But neither of them spoke.
        
        “I had hoped to hear them,” he said to Fremlin.
        
        “Not on your first meeting,” the bird master explained. “They must come to trust you before they will speak. And even then, you would not understand their language.”
        
        “I've been given to understand,” Sandow said, “that as their trainer picks up the Squealer tongue, they begin to use our tongue.”
        
        “That they do. But little of it. Their mouths are not made for complicated tongues. It is more than mimickry, however, for they use the words correctly and with some sense of humor.”
        
        “Mounting now!” Commander Richter called back the line. “Mounting now!”
        
        “I hope to see you later and to hear your birds,” the Shaker said, nodding to Fremlin and turning for his own horse.
        
        “All is packed well yet,” Gregor said from his own horse ahead of the Shaker.
        
        Behind the Shaker, Mace reported: “Commander Richter neither saw nor heard anything suspicious. As we thought.”
        
        “As we thought,” Shaker Sandow agreed. And then the train was moving forward again.
        
        As they joggled along the hilly countryside, climbing steadily higher on a double-back trail, Sandow carefully considered the bird master, Fremlin. Could he possibly be one of the killers, that rather timid man who went to such care to conceal the size and the power of his musculature beneath ill-fitting garments and also, beneath the air of fragile boyishness he wore? Was his concern for the birds nothing more than a ruse, and would he, before they were finished with this trek,